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  • The ATI Radeon HD 5970 - meet the new king

    AMD has been on a tear releasing new DirectX11-capable Radeon HD 5000 series parts. Over the past month or two, the company released the Radeon HD 5870, the Radeon HD 5850, the Radeon HD 5770, and the Radeon HD 5750. All of those cards were apparently just the appetizers. Today, the company unveiled the Radeon HD 5970, a beast of a card that weighs in with dual GPUs, 2GB of RAM, and a $600 price tag that should make more than a few people dizzy.

    Did we mention it was long?

    Like other Radeon HD 5000 series cards, the Radeon HD 5970 comes with support for DirectX11 and triple monitor outputs capable of Eyefinity. Each of the GPUs has 1,600 stream processors, giving the HD 5970 a total of 3,200 stream processors. The core clock is set at 725MHz, and the memory is set at 1GHz. By comparison, the Radeon HD 5870 has an 850MHz core and 1.2GHz memory. When you get down to it, the Radeon HD 5970 is the equivalent of two Radeon HD 5870s slapped together and running slightly slower. ATI made it a point to tell us that the card is highly overclockable: ours made its way up to a 795MHz core clock and 1150MHz on the RAM.

    To say the card is large is an understatement. It's roughly a foot long, which means it's going to be a tough squeeze fitting it into anything but the largest of cases. Forget the card exists if you have a small form-factor PC, and quite likely if you have a medium-sized computer. If you're even vaguely contemplating picking up a Radeon HD 5970, do yourself a favor and pull out a ruler to see if it will fit. In all likelihood you're going to have to move a hard drive and likely even remove an entire hard drive cage.

    The Radeon HD 5970 gets difficult to test if you're not a computer store. We've got a room full of stuff, and even then we're outclassed by this video card. We've got 24-inch monitors that run at 1920x1200, and the Radeon HD 5970 trots all over them. Even a single 30-inch monitor with a resolution of 2560x1600 wouldn't stress it enough. Our results show that the Radeon HD 5970 is quick, but it's capable of much more. We're actually going to have to defer to Anandtech if you want a full performance rundown.

    Click here for the results.

    If speed's the name of the game, the Radeon HD 5970 qualifies handily. With a $600 price tag and performance that falls off the right end of the charts, it gets hard to recommend simply because you're going to need so much more to tap its potential. At the very minimum, you'll need three 24-inch monitors, which cost roughly $750 or more combined. To seriously use the Radeon HD 5970, three 30-inchers will cost over $3,500, and at that point you might as well spend the extra $600 on a second Radeon HD 5970 (since the Radeon HD 5970 is the only Radeon 5000 series card capable of Eyefinity support in Crossfire at the moment). For the rest of the population (all 99.9999999 percent of us), we're better off scratching that pixel-pushing itch with something considerably less expensive.

  • Xbox Live gets closer to releasing Twitter, Facebook, last.fm, and more

    Xbox Live's promised land of social networking is getting closer to fruition. The company's been telling us about the upcoming Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm, and Instant On 1080p video marketplace for some time. We got to sit down with Ron Pessner, a general manager of Xbox Live Engagement, to test drive these upcoming additions.

    Microsoft knew it would be difficult to recreate the full experience of all of these website applications, especially since they're best experienced from two feet away, and with a mouse and keyboard. The new apps are very focused in their capabilities, and from what we got to experience, quite functional in their own right.

    Facebook on Xbox Live pulls in the news feed and auto scrolls it if you leave it to its own devices. Poking around the New Experience themed menu revealed that we could check up on friends, update our status, and really get down and dirty in the photos section. We had a blast flipping through both our photos and those of our friends. Navigating through the snapshots was quick and intuitive, and commenting on them, even easier.

    Out side of that you're also able to able to find friends on Facebook that have Xbox Live accounts. Quite a time saver if you don't want to bother asking all of them what their gamer tags are.

    Last.fm lets you stream music, set up faux radio stations, and even explore the musical selections of your friends. The whole experience is geared around getting to the music as quickly as possible. While the tunes plays, the app streams in pictures of the band as a backdrop. Should you want to explore a bit while listening, amble over to the more information button to learn more about the band. Microsoft and Last.fm are also rolling out a "Gamer" radio station that they think will appeal to us. We didn't get to explore that as much as we'd like to, but we're certainly curious as to what they came up with.

    Twitter is probably the least New Experience stylized app of the bunch. The service is dead simple. Post 140 characters or less on whatever you want and that's it. The Xbox Live app lets you explore your friend's feeds, follow new users, search, and post new tweets. You can also leave it on to automatically get a stream of Twitter updates from your friends as well. The backdrop shifts around with simple animations so that your screen doesn't burn-in.

    We really got a kick out of the Instant On 1080p Zune video marketplace. The service still has its quirks (we saw a beta), but it looks and feels spectacular. In a nutshell, you can buy and rent video from it in 1080p quality. As a plus, files you purchase will be usable on the Zune, Xbox 360 and your PC. We didn't get to experience downloaded video, but streams we saw looked great. Microsoft's software constantly checks your bandwidth to make sure you're getting the best image possible at any given point in time. If your brother starts downloading a large file, the video quality will get a little blockier, but it will continue without a hitch. Once he's done downloading, the video quality will automatically get much more crisp.

    Microsoft didn't indicate a specific date for all these new features, but it aims to release them sometime in November.

  • ATI launches the Radeon HD 5770 and Radeon HD 5750

    ATI's on a roll at the moment. After successfully launching the Radeon HD 5870 and 5850 a scant two weeks prior, it's following up with some more mainstream offerings - the Radeon HD 5770 and 5750. The Radeon HD 5770 will cost $159, and the Radeon HD 5750 will hit the market even lower at $109. We received the Radeon HD 5770 for testing and put it through the gauntlet.

    Specification wise, both cards are essentially cut down versions of their top-end brethren. At roughly half the price, you're also getting half the card. The numbers for both cards follow below.

    Radeon HD 5770

    • 800 Stream Processors
    • 850MHz Core Clock
    • 1GB GDDR5
    • 1.2GHz Memoy Clock

    Radeon HD 5750

    • 720 Stream Processors
    • 700 MHz Core Clock
    • 512MB or 1GB GDDR5
    • 1150MHz Memory Clock

    By comparison the flagship $379 Radeon HD 5870 has 1600 stream processors, an 850MHz core clock, and 1GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1.2GHz. The rest of the benefits of the Radeon 5000 series apply to both the 5770 and 5750 - lower power usage, DirectX 11 support, and great home theater support for Dolby True HD and DTS Master Audio.

    Eyefinity

    Both the Radeon HD 5770 and 5750 support Eyefinity, ATI's multi-monitor output solution. The two cards can run three monitors, although doing so could prove tricky. If you already own three monitors and want to plug them in, two of your monitors can run on either DVI or HDMI inputs with plug converters. To enable the third monitor you will need a Displayport monitor or an active Displayport adapter to convert an existing DVI/HDMI monitor into one. We've seen numerous posts, in forums about just this issue. ATI didn't go out of their way to hide this little fact. It's just not something most people are looking for in the manual, and to be honest we were a little blindsided by it too, despite the company's best efforts.

    At $100, an active Displayport adapter doesn't come cheap. Depending on how big of a monitor you have, you might be better off selling it and simply getting a new Displayport monitor. Displayport monitors aren't nearly as plentiful as standard DVI/HDMI monitors, but fortunately there's not much of a cost premium attached to them either. Dell has numerous models ranging from $200 on up.

    Performance

    Depending upon the game, the Radeon HD 5770 performs right underneath the Radeon HD 4870 and the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 or fairly close to them. The GeForce GTS 260 is close in price, but the real competition comes from the Radeon HD 4870, which can be had for as little as $145. Choosing between the two is difficult, as you could opt for higher overall performance or go slightly slower and gain the benefit of lower power requirements, DirectX 11 support, and a glimpse into the future of multi-monitor gaming. With less than $20 up or down, you pretty much have to figure out what's more important to you. We'd side with the Radeon HD 5770 simply for the triple monitor desktop support.

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